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in five volumes as number 35 in the series Dumbarton Oaks Studies
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TRADITIONAL PRIVATE RELIGIOUS FOUNDTAIONS
CHAPTER ONE
Traditional Private Religious Foundations
So, today we have been led by the fatherly commands to leave this rule in writing as an
enduring monument for later generations; and as far as we can, we have submitted our-
selves in obedience. (4) Stoudios [1]
I made up my mind . . . to leave you the present fatherly testament of mine, just as
carnal fathers leave their children an earthly inheritance of silver and gold and other
property . . . (6) Rila [2]
When I said: But the brothers are afraid, father, that you will die suddenly and leave the
monastery high and dry, without having either made a will or given any other instruc-
tions for the two monasteries, the father answered: They have no cause for fear on that
score; there will be a rule, and the emperor and patriarch are going to see it. (9) Galesios
[223]
There are ten documents in this first group of Byzantine monastic foundation documents, dating
from the early seventh to the late eleventh century. Most of these were written for the traditional
private religious foundations that dominated the ecclesiastical landscape of the Byzantine Empire
during these centuries.1 Since monasticism itself had its origins in Egypt in the fourth century as
a movement of lay piety, the first monasteries were themselves necessarily private foundations.
Although the emperors and the ecclesiastical hierarchy sponsored churches from the time of
Constantine (306337), there was at first no tradition of patronage of monasteries by the public
authorities of late antiquity. Many bishops who did later found monasteries, beginning in the fifth
century, chose to regard them as personal possessions rather than as diocesan institutions. So even
before the end of late antiquity, the tradition of the Byzantine monasterys independence of public
authority had struck deep roots.
This proved to be one virtually ineradicable legacy of late antiquity bequeathed to the medi-
eval Byzantine monastic tradition. Indeed, most of the documents included in this chapter take for
granted the private status of the foundations for which they were written. They typically offer
little explicit evidence on their patronage and legal status until either alternative forms of private
organization or threats to their independence emerged, both of which happened in a significant
way in Byzantium only in the eleventh century.
1 For a survey, see my Private Religious Foundations in the Byzantine Empire (Washington, D.C.,
1987), esp. chaps. 1, 2, and 4.
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CHAPTER ONE
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TRADITIONAL PRIVATE RELIGIOUS FOUNDTAIONS
still in the future when (4) Stoudios was composed sometime in the ninth century. It exhibits
features of both of these types of documents. Since the typikon leitourgikon was the more formu-
laic of the two types, even later not every founder thought it necessary to compose one of these
documents. The author of the tenth-century (7) Latros [8], for example, enjoins his monks to
follow the Rule of Jerusalem, a likely reference to the typikon leitourgikon of the monastery of
St. Sabas near Jerusalem. Still, the principle of pairing two documents to govern the foundation
was preserved.
The document included here as (9) Galesios is in fact a collection of extracts from Gregory
the Galesiotes Life of the founder Lazarus that provides a fair idea of the content of the latters
lost typikon which bore the formal title of Testament (diatyposis). The extracts demonstrate that
by the mid-eleventh century, the composition of typika had become so standardized that scribes
knew appropriate boilerplate passages that needed to be inserted to cover routine contingencies.
The last document in this chapter, (10) Eleousa, is the product of nearly two hundred years of
literary evolution since (3) Theodore Studites, during which typika developed under the influence
of and as a supplement to testaments, while testaments gradually took on more and more of a
regulatory function and became more like typika themselves.
4. Accidents of Preservation
The tenuousness of the preservation of many of the documents in this chapter deserves emphasis.
One, (1) Apa Abraham, comes to us as an original text preserved by chance on an Egyptian papy-
rus. Another, (2) Pantelleria, was preserved through an extremely circuitous route in an Old Church
Slavonic translation. Four of the documents owe their preservation to encapsulation in hagiographic
literature.3 The long historical continuity of the foundations for which (6) Rila and (10) Eleousa
were written surely helped assure the preservation of those documents. Only (4) Stoudios, an
influential text for at least a hundred years after its composition, is attested today in many manu-
scripts.
3 (5) Euthymios, (6) Rila, (7) Latros, and (8) John Xenos.
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CHAPTER ONE
4 See Julien Leroy, La rforme studite, OCA 153 (1958), 181214, and the discussion below in (4)
Stoudios, The Studite Monastic Reform.
5 For the diversity of forms of Byzantine monasticism in the era before the great monastic reform
began in the late eleventh century, see Denise Papachryssanthou, La vie monastique dans les campagnes
byzantines du VIIIe au XIe sicle, Byzantion 43 (197374), 15880. Alexander Kazhdan, Hermitic, Ceno-
bitic, and Secular Ideals in Byzantine Hagiography of the Ninth through the Twelfth Centuries, GOTR 30
(1985), 47387, argues, however, for a cyclical variation on the popularity of cenobitic and hermitic alterna-
tives.
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TRADITIONAL PRIVATE RELIGIOUS FOUNDTAIONS
C. Historical Context
6 For the Justinianic regulatory system and his imperial-sponsored religious foundations, see Michel
Kaplan, Les proprits de la couronne et de lglise dans lEmpire byzantin (VeVIe sicles) (Paris, 1976);
A. Knecht, System des justinianischen Kirchenvermgensrechtes (Stuttgart, 1905); and my own Private
Religious Foundations, chap. 2, pp. 3758.
7 For an important study of the relationship between monasticism and Byzantine society during the
Iconoclastic controversy, see Kathryn Ringrose, Saints, Holy Men and Byzantine Society, 726 to 843
(Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1976).
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CHAPTER ONE
and early seventh centuries that had relied on cash incomes assigned by their patrons.8 While (3)
Theodore Studites and (4) Stoudios show very little concern for such prosaic matters, they hint at
the general changeover to formal landed endowments of property as the new means of supporting
monastic foundations that other sources show took place at this time. Although the practice of
manual labor was not yet abandoned and was still defended energetically on at least a theoretical
level by Theodore the Studite himself, it became less important in the ninth century as it was no
longer essential for an institutions support.
8 See the discussion in my Private Religious Foundations, pp. 12325, 12730; for earlier financing
devices, see pp. 4753, 11518.
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TRADITIONAL PRIVATE RELIGIOUS FOUNDTAIONS
Leo VI had effectively dismantled the last remaining Justinianic restraints on the prerogatives of
their founders, and public subsidies and other means of support for these foundations were in-
creasingly common. Yet private benefactors were not willing to permit imperial patronage to com-
promise their control of these institutions. The ultimate success of the author of (5) Euthymioss
attempt to privatize his imperial foundation is unknown, but other tenth-century founders sought
to develop monasteries that would be immune from public control. In Bulgaria, (6) Rila, whose
founder counsels [8] the rejection of gifts offered by earthly kings and princes, and in Asia
Minor, (7) Latros, whose author Paul ignores all public authorities, are illustrative of the trend.
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CHAPTER ONE
of the independence of their foundations. An independent monastery had its own endowment,
under the administration of its superior, and was managed by its own officials without interfer-
ence by or concession of economic benefits to the founder or his family. Though the independent
and self-governing monastery was in its origins a deliberate mutation of the traditional private
religious foundation, it necessarily obliged a founder to make substantially greater financial sac-
rifices. Therefore, despite its increasing prestige towards the end of the eleventh century, the new
form of organization was not universally popular. Manuel of Stroumitza, author of (10) Eleousa,
clearly hesitated between the traditional and the new form of institutional organization, finally
opting for the latter, but was unwilling to permit it to take effect until another generation of lead-
ership after his own had passed on.
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